The basic assumption of a structural VARMA model (SVARMA) is that it is driven by a white noise whose components are independent and can be interpreted as economic shocks, called “structural” shocks. When the errors are Gaussian, independence is equivalent to noncorrelation and these models have to face two kinds of identification issues. The first identification problem is “static” and is due ...

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a recent statistical procedure to sample from complex distributions. Distant proposal draws are taken in a sequence of steps following the Hamiltonian dynamics of the underlying parameter space, often yielding superior mixing properties of the resulting Markov chain. However, its performance can deteriorate sharply with the degree of irregularity of the underlyi...

This paper avails of the multinational-level Amadeus dataset to study the dynamics of the European pharmaceutical industry in the Single Market Programme era: 1990-2004. Our unit of investigations are multinationals that every period decide whether to expand or not, by capturing at least one of the arisen opportunities. By using a dynamic panel probit approach with unobserved heterogeneity we s...

This paper analyzes the relationship between long-term care provision and the average individual wage rate. In addition, the eff ects of the number of hours spent on caregiving on the probability of employment as well as on the number of hours worked are examined. Data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE) of 2004 and 2006 is used to analyze caregiving eff ects on the Europea...

JEL Classification Numbers: E 31, E 52

Six major challenges confront statistical researchers attempting to quantify accurately the independent effect of neighbourhood context on individuals: (1) defining the scale of neighbourhood; (2) identifying mechanisms of neighbourhood effect; (3) measuring appropriate neighbourhood characteristics; (4) measuring exposure to neighbourhood; (5) measuring appropriate individual characteristics; ...